Tag Archives: families

Recently I attended the Space Weather Enterprise Forum (SWEF) in Washington DC. This year the conference, organized by the National Space Weather Program (NSWP) Council, was entitled “Solar Maximum 2013 – How Space Weather Will Affect You!” So what I’m thinking is that I’m not crazy and even that the larger Space Weather scientific community believes this will affect you!

So I spent the day with representatives from various stakeholders including providers, users, and researchers from government, academia, and the private sector. This year’s focus was on two aspects of our Nation’s critical infrastructure: electrical power distribution networks and precision navigation and timing provided by Global Navigation Satellite Systems. Please check out the detailed information at the below link:

So as I sat there amongst all of those scientific types, I have to say, I kept thinking I’m just a continuity planner. How can I possibly keep up with their knowledge base and learn all there is to absorb? These are the real Space Cowboys! (Oh, I can hear Steve Miller Band right now…wish I was clever enough to make it play during this post 🙂 ). And they are, but they all share one trait. They are more than willing to share their knowledge. As a matter of fact, they are dying to communicate with us “regulars” about what all we need to know. So how best can I plug you directly into their knowledge base?

One of our freebies at the conference was an issue of Space Weather Quarterly: The International Journal of Research and Applications. This is a free publication, and I’ve got to say, it is outstanding. The articles are at a level where even us regular folks can understand the information. If you are at all interested in my previous posts regarding space weather, I really recommend you consider visiting the below site and registering for a subscription.

Not only is the current edition exceptional, but you can also access back issues via the website as well. I haven’t gotten the opportunity to review as many of the back articles as I would like, but they are on my list of to do’s. Get yourself a subscription, I’m going to want to talk soon about some of these articles in particular.

This solar weather topic is not going away because the risk is not going away. As many meetings as I’m attending professionally on this topic, the one thing that keeps popping up is PREPAREDNESS, not just for our government, but for FAMILIES. Take advantage of this resource. You’ll be glad you did.